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Friday, November 20, 2015

An uptight lawyer who is about to get married takes his recently widower grandpa on what he thought would be an average day on a golf course. What could possibly go wrong? A lot when you discover that the man who you thought was a well-respected old fashioned person turns out to be a foul mouthed curmudgeon who hasn’t had sex in 15 years. Such is the basis for the film Dirty Grandpa starring Zac Efron and Robert De Niro.
Lionsgate has just released the newest red band trailer for Dirty Grandpa which features all sorts of devious sex acts, troublemaking, drug use, and other explicit things that can be considered NSFW. So break out those headphones, and make sure no one is watching, because you can watch the latest red band trailer for the film below.
The trailer does have its moments, but for the most part, that is all it is, just moments that make you chuckle. As a whole it does nothing to get me interested in watching the film. Which is a bit sad considering the talent that is involved in the film. And De Niro doesn’t seem the least bit interested in having sex with Aubery Plaza’s character, no matter how hard she tries to seduce him.
Of course since the film debuts in the early parts of next year, it’s not completely surprising that it is being dumped in the time of the year where films like these are normally dumped.
Or maybe I am just not the right demographic for this film. Then again, I did find The Hangover films funny, so maybe the film is just not right for me. That being said, if you like what you see, then by all means go watch the film.
Also starring Zoey Deutch, Julianne Hough, Jason Mantzoukas, Danny Glover, Adam Pally, and Dermot Mulroney, Dirty Grandpahits theaters on January 22nd, 2016.
Here’s the official plot synopsis:

Right before his wedding, an uptight guy named Jason Kelly (Zac Efron) is tricked into driving his foul-mouthed, former Army general grandfather Dick (Robert De Niro) to Florida for spring break, and his fiance (Julianne Hough) is a little concerned abot it.Aubrey Plaza (The To-Do List), Dermot Mulroney (My Best Friend’s Wedding), Zoey Deutch (Vampire Academy), Jason Mantzoukas (“The League”), Adam Pally (“The Mindy Project”) and Henry Zebrowski (The Wolf of Wall Street) co-star in Dirty Grandpa, which is directed by Dan Mazer (I Give It a Year) from a script by John Phillips.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

“Spike your best friend’s eggnog when they are not looking,” reads the tag line of the Bloomingdale’s ad, in a recent holiday catalog.

A woman is looking away, laughing and smiling at someone, while a man is leering at her. The caption is between them.

Are you f*cking kidding me?

What exactly is being sold here or advertised? The clothes? The concept? The season?

Who at Bloomingdale’s thought this up, and what team, boss or authority reviewed it, approved it and sent it into to circulation?

I don’t get it, and the fact that it happened during the same week that people have lost their minds over the Starbucks Holiday cup is making my head spin.

Could someone explain to me why this doesn’t get the same level of outrage? I know I’m seeing red.

It’s not like an ad is an Instagram photo that gets shot and accidentally sent out in the world.

People modeled for the ad. Someone had to think up the tag line, commit it to type, choose a font and color and then share the whole thing. That doesn’t happen with one person, or even one department, in most places.

“In reflection of recent feedback, the copy we used in our recent catalog was inappropriate and in poor taste,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “Bloomingdale’s sincerely apologizes for this error in judgment.”

It’s “inappropriate and in bad taste” just in reflection of recent feedback? Just in reflection? Does that mean if feedback were different, it wouldn’t be inappropriate or in bad taste?

Huh?

Then there’s the headlines about the story.

Fortune: “Bloomindale’s Apologizes for Ad Seen as Encouraging Date Rape”

I’m sorry, what else is one supposed to infer about secretly spiking your best friend’s eggnog, while out at a holiday party, while she’s not looking?

What’s the other less date-rapey implication, that I’m supposed to be taking away, that I’m missing?

You don’t have to be a feminist or an activist or a scholar to know what rape culture is in a time like this.

It’s simple—rape culture is the culture where this ad gets made.

Rape culture is where Bloomingdale’s gets away without a real apology and where those writing headlines don’t know how to be clear.

Rape culture is where Bill Cosby needs to have dozens of women say the same thing for years, before one of them is believed, and where he is seen as the victim of attacks.

This is rape culture—using spiking a drink, while the woman isn’t looking, as something that helps promote a business.

Rape culture is the culture I live in, and that’s terrifying, because I’m female and a sister, daughter, mother and aunt in world where 1 in 5 females will experience sexual assault, just while at college. It’s a world where 1 in 4 of us females will be sexually assaulted during our lives.

This world.

This culture.

That’s it—that’s how simple a concept rape culture is.

One in which an ad like this comes out—yet people lose their minds over a coffee cup.

And some of us have to remind others that rape isn’t funny, sexy or a good ad idea.

Rape is a crime.

Rape is a violent, real and serious—and we have to explain that isn’t funny.

That’s rape culture.

90% of the time, victims of sexual violence know the person who they are assaulted by.

This ad is an example of exactly what rape culture is.

90% of people assaulted know the perpetrator, who is often a friend, teacher, co-worker, boss, neighbor or relative. Which is why the entire conversation about consent is so important.

There are apparently people who don’t understand that rape isn’t funny, because we still live in a world wheresomeone thought suggesting “secret eggnog spiking,” as a kind of holiday-festive-druggy-sexy-flirt move, was agreat idea.

They though it could be a great way to help sell stuff during the holiday season—and it didn’t get shut down.

In 2015.

It’s astounding and there are a ton of us who don’t think it’s even a tiny bit funny, seductive, smart or charming—and who are royally pissed off.

We know the real picture behind that picture.

The one not used as an ad—the one that follows after the non-consent or the drugging or spiking. We’ve known or lived as the woman who is sobbing, heartbroken, shocked, shattered and limp—because she’s been violated by the “best friend” who turned out not to be the best.

Or she’s rendered completely silent, speechless and maybe semi lifeless, because she just doesn’t know how to go on with what happened.

Or he doesn’t know if or who to tell, because he doesn’t know if he’ll be believed or supported, or if it will turn into more of a nightmare.

So maybe “no” to the ad, to the bullshit apology and to having to explain rape culture in the culture where an ad like this gets made.

No to having to make a case, again and again and again, saying rape is a crime and not a joke.

No to the eye rolling people, who just don’t want to think or hear about this.

The eye rollers made this ad.

The eye rollers approved this ad.

The eye rollers didn’t listen to anyone who might have said, “Not funny. Not happening. Not a good idea. Not okay.”

How the hell does this ad even get made? I can’t even imagine how an ad like this gets made? It seems unfathomable except that it happened.

My friend, Laura Parrott Perry , wrote on her Facebook page:

“So, there’s a marketing meeting at Bloomingdale’s. The ad agency guy, dressed like Don Draper, says, “You know what’s festive and fun? Date rape!” And all the men nod their heads. “That’s a great idea, Don! You sure do have your finger on the pulse of what ladies like! (I need to believe there was no woman in the room.)”

I hear that.

I need to believe one day an ad like this one won’t even be thought of as a good idea—by anyone. Not a single soul.

DAN GENTILE/THRILLIST

Everyone has their preferred method and maker for home-brewed coffee, but which way yields the best flavor is constantly up for debate. Sure, people assume Chemex coffee is mellower than French press, but is it true? To definitively find out the best way to make coffee at home, we blind tested seven different coffee making devices: a French press, AeroPress, Chemex, Kalita Wave, an auto drip brewer, Moka stovetop espresso, and a single-serving Keurig.

We enlisted Lorenzo Perkins -- a member of the Barista Guild Executive Council and owner of forthcoming Austin, TX cafe Fleet Coffee -- to ensure each coffee was brewed correctly, and we brewed two kinds of beans -- a bold Starbucks Breakfast Blend and more subtle Counter Culture La Voz -- since different coffees are sometimes better suited to different methods.

DAN GENTILE/THRILLIST

The process:
1. The tasters received seven cups of coffee, each brewed using a different method.
2. Each cup was then ranked from best to worst. Each ranking was assigned a point value (first place earned seven points, second place earned six, and so on).
3. The process was repeated with the second kind of bean.
4. Scores were tallied and ranked.

Here are the results.

DAN GENTILE/THRILLIST

7. Keurig K-Cup Coffee Maker, 24 points

We loaded up the K-Cup machine with a pod that allows you to use your own coffee and hoped for the best. Although our cream and sugar fan rated this well because the mildness would pair well with sweeteners, most others thought the brew was flat, flavorless, and watery. The most fitting description was "bank lobby coffee."

DAN GENTILE/THRILLIST

6. Moka stovetop espresso maker, 35 points

For our espresso drinker who liked to chew her coffee, this ranked highly. Others didn't enjoy the sediment that gathered at the bottom of the cups. The darker beans had a motor oil quality, while the lighter roast dialed up the fruitiness to mouth-puckering levels, so both ends of the spectrum suffered.

5. Auto drip coffee brewer, 44 points

Across the board our tasters found this to be stronger and more bitter than other brews, which worked with some palates, but offended others. Our coffee newbie thought this was more of an expert-level coffee due to the oiliness and sharpness, which was surprising because auto drip machines are the most commonly used of all these methods.

DAN GENTILE/THRILLIST

4. French press, 51 points

Generally considered a gateway method to manual pourovers, the French press resulted in a flavor profile that was much nuttier, but the acidity was toned way down. Despite the thicker body, most of the jury thought it was more neutral and less vibrant. Surprisingly, several tasters noted alkaline flavors and correctly guessed that this method didn't use a paper filter.

DAN GENTILE/THRILLIST

3. Kalita Wave, 55 points

Although it sounds like a super fancy method, the Kalita Wave is basically just the same type of hopper you'd see in a Mr. Coffee maker, except you place it directly over your cup and pour the water yourself. The consensus was that the coffee was well-balanced, but a little bland, which worked to tone down the darker coffee but didn't bring out enough flavor from the lighter one.

2. Chemex, 57 points

The only coffee maker with a permanent space in the Museum of Modern Art, the Chemex is an elegant vase-looking pourover method that's great for making large batches. The non-coffee drinker in the group ranked this last, equating it to a sour beer. Others agreed with the sour beer sentiment, but found that the coffee sweetened as it cooled and was still strong, but with a smoother texture and not as overly-aggressive as some of the other methods.

DAN GENTILE/THRILLIST

1. AeroPress, 70 points

Invented by the maker of the Aerobie Frisbee, the AeroPress has been a cult gadget among coffee nerds for some time, and, if our jury's tastes are any indication, should be a welcome addition to anyone's coffee-making arsenal. It won by a landslide because of its ability to help roasted characteristics shine through without the bitterness, while accentuating the oily, flavorful aspects of the darker beans. It also cooled better than the others, retaining bold notes at lukewarm temperatures, balanced by an underlying sweetness that endeared it to even our cream and sugar fan.

Conclusion:

There will always be coffee-is-coffee skeptics out there, but our entire jury was surprised by just how diverse the same coffee could taste when prepared different ways. Although the AeroPress won this test by a mile, it's important to note that it didn't receive first place votes across the board, but it was hands-down the most consistently pleasing across a wide array of palates. It's worth paying attention to how you brew! And maybe consider kicking K-cups.

Dan Gentile is a staff writer at Thrillist. He'd like to apologize to all the sleep schedules of all of the taste testers. Follow him to cleaning up his kitchen at @Dannosphere.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Amazon has already kicked off its Black Friday deals early this year and has just announced a selection of upcoming offers that will run from November 20th. Discounts can be found on everything from electronics and video games, to fashion and kitchen appliances.

New Black Friday deals will be arrive “as often as every five minutes” and there are a number of Gold Box Deals of the Day to keep an eye on as well. For example, today you can already grab a Fitbit One for $74.99. Amazon Prime members will be given a 30 minute head start on most of the limited Lightening deals. There will also be a number of other exclusive sales that are only available through the Amazon Mobile Shipping App. These will be released daily from 3 PM PT to 11 PM PT, starting Thanksgiving and running through to December 9th.

When it comes to electronics, our favourite Amazon category, there’s a big selection of deals to be had. Amazon is offering discounts on its selection of Kindle readers and tablets, its Fire TV box and Fire TV Stick. A number of Samsung Galaxy Tablets will also have a 20 percent saving applied in the week, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

There also are discounts on a huge range of TV and speaker products. A 15” ASUS laptop can be bought for just $129, while there’s 50 percent to be saved on the Sennheiser HD 598 over-ear headphones. If you need more space in your smartphone or tablet, there’s up to 70 percent off select SanDisk memory cards and USB flash drives too.

That should be everything you need to keep an eye on the best Amazon deals later this week. To see the full range of discounts revealed so far, click the press release button below.

Enjoy new deals every five minutes starting Friday, November 20 through Friday, November 27

Effortlessly keep tabs on top deals from anywhere with new “Watch A Deal” feature

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Nov. 18, 2015– (NASDAQ:AMZN)—Amazon.com today announced holiday deals start on Friday, November 20, with new deals added as often as every five minutes for eight straight days at www.amazon.com/blackfriday. Customers will have access to 10 coveted Deals of the Day starting at midnight on Thanksgiving, and up to 10 more on Black Friday. Customers can also shop limited-time Lightning Deals on thousands of sought-after products per day throughout the eight days of deals. Plus, Prime members will get 30-minutes early access to the majority of these Lightning Deals.

This year, Amazon will introduce more than 150 hand-picked Lightning Deals on everything from electronics to kitchen gadgets only through the Amazon Mobile Shopping App available on Android, iOS, and Fire OS. These deals can be found on the “App Only Deals” tab and will be released daily from 3 PM PT to 11 PM PT starting Thanksgiving through Wednesday, December 9. In addition, Prime members in 20 metro areas can use the dedicated Prime Now mobile app to enjoy free two-hour delivery on select Deals of the Day throughout the holiday season.

Last year, total holiday sales from the Amazon Mobile Shopping App doubled in the U.S. and Black Friday had the most rapid growth in mobile shopping. This year, it will be even easier to spend time with loved ones thanks to “Watch A Deal” which allows holiday shoppers to pick the deals they’re most excited about and receive a notification to their mobile device when the deal is live. With this new feature, Amazon customers can effortlessly take advantage of deals throughout the day and while on-the-go.

“Customers can truly sit back and relax with their family and friends this holiday season knowing that they will be notified as soon as the products they’ve had their eye on are about to go on sale,” said Steve Shure, Vice President, Amazon Consumer Marketing. “Year after year, more and more customers shop for deals on Amazon from the comfort of their own home, and we continue to make that process even more convenient for them. And with App Only Deals, customers will have plenty of options when it comes to scoring great deals from Amazon.”

Following are examples of some of the top deals that will be available at various times between November 20 and Black Friday at www.amazon.com/blackfriday:

Up to 25% off select skin care products, including Dove, Olay, and more

Books, Music & Video Games:

80% off Transformers: The Covenant of Primus

Save more than 50% on Deathstroke Volume 1 Book and Mask Set

Save on more than 10 autographed CDs, including Kenny Rogers, Megadeth, and more (Amazon Exclusive)

Save 15% or more on select vinyl records

Save $20 on Need for Speed

Save $30 on Rock Band 4 Wireless Guitar Bundle

$50 off Xbox One Consoles

$50 off PlayStation 4 Uncharted Bundle

$25 off Metal Gear Solid V

Hundreds of PC download deals up to 70% off

All prices available at select times and while supplies last.

Amazon Prime members enjoy unlimited Free Two-Day Shipping on more than 20 million items and unlimited Free Same-Day Delivery on more than a million items in 16 metro areas. In addition, Prime members in 20 metro areas receive one- and two-hour delivery on tens of thousands of everyday essentials with the dedicated Prime Now mobile app. To become a member, visit www.amazon.com/prime. Amazon also offers free shipping on millions of items every day, year-round, on eligible orders of $35 or more.

About Amazon

Amazon.com opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995. The company is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit www.amazon.com/about.

Tom Brady Talks to Chuck Klosterman About Deflategate (Sort Of . . .)

Tom Brady is . . .
A) The greatest of all time
B) A slow man with a strong arm
C) A cheater
D) The quarterback we deserve
E) None of the above
F) Some of the above
G) All of the above. Chuck Klosterman provides the answer

Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback in NFL history.

That’s
just my opinion, and that opinion is fungible. If someone else had made
the same claim five years ago, I would have disagreed; five years ago, I
didn’t even think he was the best quarterback of his generation. But
the erosion of time has validated his ascension. Classifying Brady as
the all-time best QB is not a universally held view, but it’s become the
default response. His statistical legacy won’t match Peyton Manning’s,
and Manning has changed the sport more. But Brady’s six Super Bowl
appearances (and his dominance in their head-to-head matchups) tilt the
scales of hagiography in his direction. He has been football’s most
successful player at the game’s most demanding position, during an era
when the importance of that position has been incessantly amplified. His
greatness can be quantified through a wide range of objective metrics.

Yet it’s the subjective details that matter more.

America’s
fanatical, perverse obsession with football is rooted in a multitude of
smaller fixations, most notably the concept of who a quarterback is and
what that person represents. There is no cultural corollary in any
other sport. It’s the only position on the field a CEO would compare
himself to, or a surgeon, or an actual general. It’s the only position
in sports that racists still worry about. People who don’t care about
football nevertheless understand that every clichéd story about high
school involves the prom queen dating the quarterback. It serves as a
signifier for a certain kind of elevated human, and Brady is that human
in a non-metaphoric sense. He looks the way he’s supposed to look. He
has the kind of wife he’s supposed to have. He has the right kind of
inspirational backstory: a sixth-round draft pick who runs the 40-yard
dash in a glacial 5.2 seconds, only to prove such things don’t matter
because this job requires skills that can’t be reliably measured.
Brady’s vocation demands an inexact combination of mental and physical
faculties, and it all hinges on his teammates’ willingness to follow him
unconditionally. This is part of the reason Brady does things like make
cash payments to lowly practice-squad players who pick off his passes
during scrimmages—he must embody the definition of leadership, almost
like a president. In fact, it sometimes seems like Brady could
eventually be president, or at least governor of Massachusetts.

But this will never happen.

When I ask if it’s something he’s ever considered, he responds as if I am crazy.

“There
is a 0.000 chance of me ever wanting to do that,” says Brady. “I just
think that no matter what you’d say or what you’d do, you’d be in a
position where—you know, you’re politicking. You know? Like, I think the
great part about what I do is that there’s a scoreboard. At the end of
every week, you know how you did. You know how well you prepared. You
know whether you executed your game plan. There’s a tangible score. I
think in politics, half the people are gonna like you and half the
people are not gonna like you, no matter what you do or what you say.…
It’s like there are no right answers. If there were, everyone would
choose the right answers. They’re all opinions.”

Had
Brady given this quote as a rookie, it would have meant nothing. It
would have scanned as a football player with relativist views on
politics. But the events of the past year imbue these words with a
stranger, deeper significance. After last season’s AFC Championship
game, the Patriots were accused of deflating the footballs below the
legal level. What initially appeared to be a bizarre allegation against a
pair of anonymous locker-room employees spiraled into a massive scandal
that seemed to go on forever, consistently painting Brady as the
conversational equivalent of a Person of Interest. This even applied to
his own coach, Bill Belichick. During an uncomfortable January 22 press
conference, Belichick said, “Tom’s personal preferences on his footballs
are something that he can talk about in much better detail than I could
possibly provide. I can tell you that in my entire coaching career, I
have never talked to any player, [or] staff member, about football air
pressure.”

In
May, Brady was suspended by the NFL for four games. He appealed the
suspension and was re-instated in time for the opening of the 2015
season. Days later, an intensely reported ESPN The Magazine
story outlined how the NFL bungled the Deflategate investigation and
leaked false information to reporters. But the article was more damaging
to the Patriots as an organization. It reported commissioner Roger
Goodell purposefully over-penalized Brady and the Patriots on behalf of
the other league owners, essentially as retribution for a decade of
unproven institutional cheating (potentially including the first three
New England Super Bowl victories, three games that were decided by a
total of nine points).

Brady
has never admitted any wrongdoing. He beat the suspension without
conceding anything (and in the four games he was supposed to miss, he
completed 73 percent of his passes for 11 touchdowns and zero
interceptions). His résumé remains spotless. But things are different
now, in a way that’s easy to recognize but hard to explain. Even though
he’s said absolutely nothing of consequence in public, there is a sense
that we now have a better understanding of who Tom Brady really is.
And it’s the same person we thought he was before, except now we have to admit what that actually means.

I’m interviewing Brady at a complicated point in his life. There are
several things I want to ask him, almost all of which involve the same
issue. I’m told Brady’s camp has agreed to a wide-ranging sit-down
interview, where nothing will be off the table. The initial plan is for
the meeting to happen in Boston, and it will be a lengthy conversation.
Two days before I leave, Brady’s people say that the interview can’t
happen face-to-face (and the explanation as to why is too weird to
explain). It will now be a one-hour interview on the phone.

Brady
calls me on a Tuesday. He’s driving somewhere and tells me he has only
45 minutes to talk. I ask a few questions about the unconventional
trajectory of his career, particularly how it’s possible that a man who
was never the best quarterback in the Big Ten could end up as a two-time
league MVP as a pro. He doesn’t have a cogent answer, beyond
classifying himself as a “late bloomer.” We talk about the 2007 Patriots
squad that went 16-0, and I ask if wide receiver Randy Moss was the
finest pure athlete he ever played with. He begrudgingly concedes that
Moss was “the greatest vertical threat,” although he goes out of his way
to compliment Wes Welker and Julian Edelman, too. He never brags and
he’s never self-deprecating. He never offers any information that isn’t
directly tied to the question that was posed. Everything receives a
concise, non-controversial answer (including the aforementioned passage
about his lack of political ambition). Realizing time is evaporating, I
awkwardly move into the Deflategate material, citing the findings of the
official report published by the NFL’s investigating attorney, Ted
Wells.

The remainder of the interview lasts seven minutes.

There’s
one element of the Wells Report that I find fascinating: The report
concludes that you had a “general awareness” of the footballs being
deflated. The report doesn’t say you were aware. It says you were generally aware. So I’m curious—would you say that categorization is accurate? I guess it depends on how you define the word generally. But was that categorization true or false?[pause]
I don’t really wanna talk about stuff like this. There are several
reasons why. One is that it’s still ongoing. So I really don’t have much
to say, because it’s—there’s still an appeal going on.

Oh,
I realize that. But here’s the thing: If we don’t talk about this, the
fact that you refused to talk about it will end up as the center of the
story. I mean, how can you not respond to this question? It’s a pretty
straightforward question.
I’ve had those questions for eight months and I’ve answered them, you know, multiple times for many different people, so—

I don’t think you have, really. When I ask, “Were you generally aware that this was happening,” what is the answer?
I’m
not talking about that, because there’s still ongoing litigation. It
has nothing to do with the personal question that you’re trying to ask,
or the answer you’re trying to get. I’m not talking about anything as it
relates to what’s happened over the last eight months. I’ve dealt with
those questions for eight months. It’s something that—obviously I wish
that we were talking about something different. But like I said, it’s
still going on right now. And there’s nothing more that I really want to
add to the subject. It’s been debated and talked about, especially in
Boston, for a long time.

Do you feel what has happened over these eight months has changed the way the Patriots are perceived?
I
don’t really care how the Patriots are perceived, truthfully. I really
don’t. I really don’t. Look, if you’re a fan of our team, you root for
us, you believe in our team, and you believe in what we’re trying to
accomplish. If you’re not a fan of us, you have a different opinion.

But
what you’re suggesting is that the reality of this is subjective. It’s
not. Either you were “generally aware” of this or you weren’t.
I
understand what you’re trying to get at. I think that my point is: I’m
not adding any more to this debate. I’ve already said a lot about this—

Tom, you haven’t. I wouldn’t be asking these questions if you had. There’s still a lack of clarity on this.
Chuck, go read the transcript from a five-hour appeal hearing. It’s still ongoing.

I realize it’s still ongoing. But what is your concern? That by answering this question it will somehow—
I’ve
already answered all those questions. I don’t want to keep revisiting
what’s happened over the last eight months. Whether it’s you, whether
it’s my parents, whether it’s anybody else. If that’s what you want to
talk about, then it’s going to be a
very short interview.

So
you’re just not going to comment on any of this? About the idea of the
balls being underinflated or any of the other accusations made against
the Patriots regarding those first three Super Bowl victories? You have
no
comments on any of that?
Right now, in my current state in
mid-October, dealing with the 2015 football season—I don’t have any
interest in talking about those events as they relate to any type of
distraction that they may bring to my team in 2015. I do not want to be a
distraction to my football team. We’re in the middle of our season. I’m
trying to do this as an interview that was asked of me, so… If you want
to revisit everything and be another big distraction for our team,
that’s not what I’m intending to do.

But
if I ask you whether or not you were generally aware of something and
you refuse to respond, any rational person is going to think you’re
hiding something.
Chuck, I’ve answered those questions for many months. There is no—

Were you not informed by any of the people around you that these questions were going to be asked?
[sort of incredulously] No. I was—

No?
This is ongoing litigation.

Okay, well I appreciate you taking—
I appreciate it.

—the time to talk to me. Sorry, man.
Okay.

So
what did Brady say during his June 23 appeal testimony, in response to a
question about whether he authorized the deflation of the footballs?
“Absolutely not.” When asked if he knew the footballs were being
deflated (even if he
never specifically requested that this happen), he said, “No.” This was
the answer I obviously assumed he would give when I posed the same
question to him in this interview. I did not think he would contradict
any statement he gave under oath. But I still needed to establish that
(seemingly predictable) denial as a baseline, in order to ask the
questions I was much more interested in. Specifically…

• At what point did you become aware that people were accusing you of cheating?

•
Do you (or did you) have any non-professional relationship with Jim
McNally and John Jastremski, the Patriots employees at the crux of this
controversy?

•
Do you now concede some of the balls might have been below the legal
limit, even if you had no idea this was happening? Or was the whole
thing a total fiction?

•
Do you believe negligibly deflated footballs would provide a meaningful
competitive advantage, to you or to anyone else on the offense?

• How do you explain the Patriots’ fumble rate, which some claim is unrealistically low? Is that simply a bizarre coincidence?

•
If you had no general awareness of any of this, do you feel like Bill
Belichick pushed you under the bus during his January press conference?
Were you hurt by this? Did it impact your relationship with him?

These
questions shall remain unasked, simply because Brady refused to repeat a
one-word response he claims to have given many times before. Now, I’m
not a cop or a lawyer or a judge. I don’t have any classified
information that can’t be found on the Internet. My opinion on this
event has as much concrete value as my opinion on Brady’s
quarterbacking, which is exactly zero. But I strongly suspect the real
reason Brady did not want to answer a question about his “general
awareness” of Deflategate is pretty uncomplicated: He doesn’t want to
keep saying something that isn’t true, nor does he want to directly
contradict what he said in the past. I realize that seems like a
negative thing to conclude about someone I don’t know. It seems like I’m
suggesting that he both cheated and lied, and technically I am.

But
I’m on his side here, kind of. Yes, what Brady allegedly did would be
unethical. It’s also what the world wants him to do. And that may seem
paradoxical, because—in the heat of the moment, when faced with the
specifics of a crime—consumers are programmed to express outrage and
disbelief and self-righteous indignation. But Brady is doing the very
thing that prompts athletes to be lionized; the only problem is the
immediacy of the context. And that context will evolve, in the same
direction it always does. Someday this media disaster will seem quaint.

The
Oakland Raiders of the 1970s broke every rule they could, on and off
the field, sometimes for no reason. They were successful and corrupt,
and fans living outside the Bay Area hated what they represented. But
nobody hates the ’70s Raiders now. In fact, we long for those teams,
nostalgic for the era when their sublime villainy could thrive. It’s
widely assumed Red Auerbach bugged the opponents’ locker room when he
coached the Celtics, an illicit subterfuge retrospectively re-imagined
as clever and industrious. When former Tar Heels basketball player Buzz
Peterson talks about the greatness of his college roommate Michael
Jordan, he sometimes recounts a story of the evening Jordan tried to
cheat Peterson’s mother in a card game, an anecdote employed to
reinforce how MJ was so supernaturally competitive that even middle-aged
women got sliced. The defining memory of Kansas City Royals legend
George Brett involves the illegal use of pine tar on his bat, an
unambiguous infraction that was ultimately reversed on appeal, just like
Brady’s suspension.

“I’m the pine-tar guy,” Brett would say years later. “And it’s not a bad thing to be remembered as.”

In
the present, we overvalue the rules of sport and insist that anyone
caught breaking ,those parameters must be stopped, sanctioned, and
banned. But as the decades slip away, such responses tend to invert. Who
won and who lost got hurt and nobody took drugs and nothing was fixed
by gamblers, a little deception almost becomes charming. A deficiency of
character adds character, somehow. It proves that the cheater cared.

The
Patriots are the Raiders of now, despite the fact that the Raiders
still exist. They push the limits of everything, and that’s how they
dominate. Sometimes that limit-pushing is lawful and brilliant: When
Belichick placed seven “eligible” receivers on the field against the
Ravens in last season’s divisional playoff, it was a stroke of strategic
genius. Sometimes that limit-pushing is (perhaps) significantly less
than totally legal. But it’s all philosophically essential to what makes
them who they are. They don’t need to cheat in order to win, but it
certainly doesn’t hurt. I mean, how do rich people stay rich? By
avoiding all the taxes specifically designed for rich people. How does a
football franchise sustain a dynasty within an NFL system designed to
instill parity? By attacking the boundaries of every rule in that
system, at every level of the organization. And in both cases, the perception
of those actions does not matter to the individuals involved.
Perception is other people’s problem. Brady does not hide from this: “I
don’t really care how the Patriots are perceived. I really don’t.”

There is nothing more attractive than a person who does not care if other people find him attractive.

These
are all just games. Within the grand scheme of existence, they have no
intrinsic value. A game can matter only as much as the involved players
believe it to matter. This is why no one watches the Pro Bowl. It’s also
what makes Brady di≠erent from normal people, and from other
quarterbacks: He will do whatever it takes to win, regardless of what
that win represents. He is, by definition, a winner. Which is what
everyone has always said about him. We always knew this. He is
precisely the man society demands him to be. It’s just that society
doesn’t like to think about what that means in practice.

Before
I asked Brady about Deflategate, I asked him about playing golf with
Donald Trump. He explained how this is an amazing experience, and how
you never really know what the actual score is, and that there’s always
some sort of side bet, and that Trump always goes home with the money. I
ask him if this means Trump cheats, as it’s hard to imagine how someone
could always win, particularly since Golf Digest estimates Brady’s handicap as an 8.

“Nah,” says Brady. “He just—he doesn’t lose. He just doesn’t lose.”

The scoreboard is the scoreboard is the scoreboard. Everything else is just, like, your opinion, man.

Chuck Klosterman (@CKlosterman) is the author of eight books, most recently I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined).

Ian M. Sherwin Giclée

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All you art collectors out there. Here is a chance to get a Giclee copy of some of Ian M Sherwin work. Ian is planning on doing a whole series of Marblehead, Massachusetts paintings.His work is amazing.